Western Terror: From Potosi to Baghdad
In this book of essays and political commentaries, Andre Vltchek covers conflicts across the world - from the United States to India, East Timor, Indonesia, Latin America, and beyond.
Commentary on Western Terror:
Andre Vltchek tells us about a world that few know, even when they think they do. That is because he tells the truth, vividly, with a keen sense of history, and with a perceptive eye that sees past surfaces to reality. The range of his commentary is remarkable, its insights no less so…
Noam Chomsky
Preface
Ever since I was a very young man, I have been traveling all over the world, living in different countries, learning new languages, searching for good stories; political and personal. As time passed I was able to shed all racial and cultural preferences, accepting the world as it is – rich and exciting in its diversity.
My work as a journalist and war correspondent took me to some far away (from the Western perspective) places: from East Timor and Papua to the Peruvian Andes, from Sri Lanka and Gujarat to Chiapas, from the frozen plains of Siberia to the hot, burning metal shacks of the Soweto Township near Johannesburg. I wrote fiction and poetry, but I also worked for some media giants like Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, MFD in Prague, ABC News in the United States, even Hurriyet in Istanbul. And I also wrote for emerging publications in the Czech Republic, Peru, Indonesia, Nepal and many other places.
What I learned at a fairly young age was that almost no major media wanted me to cover the “real world”; its complexity, its problems that go back to the period of colonialism. Nobody allowed me to write about the almost total Western economic, political and cultural control over the world. I tried to resist, to file good and honest stories from “controversial” places. Most of them were outright rejected or trimmed beyond recognition.
“Colonia Dignidad – never again!” I was told by the US based editor of the influential German magazine Der Stern, after offering him complete new evidence on the brutality of a German – Nazi camp in Southern Chile. All my stories about the insane Indonesian military’s genocidal actions in Ermera and other regions of East Timor were never even considered – Suharto and his generals were western allies, benevolent authoritarian figures, our good lackeys.
Technology had been changing; from slowly crawling faxes to mobile phones, followed by satellite phones and digital cameras. Transmission of information and images became fast and reliable, but messages were increasingly shallow, unchallenging, lacking historical, cultural and philosophical insights. Despite the speed of transmission, people all over the world were being put on an unappetizing diet of half-truths and shallow simplifications, often of outright lies. Consumers of the dominant news channels and newspapers worldwide – all fed from similar sources – were becoming increasingly indifferent, and almost phlegmatic.
Hunger, war and despair were no longer shocking anybody. To worry about billions of people all over the world living in a gutter would gain one a label of “extremist,” “radical,” basically an outcast.
The plunder continued. The center of power of world order with its seeds in past centuries of colonial plunder moved to nontransparent boardrooms of multinational companies. Elected governments were now serving business interests much more than the interests of those who voted for them. Elections were becoming increasingly irrelevant as the mass media owned by the new masters of the universe decided which ideas and which political parties to promote. The fabled “balance of power” in the United States collapsed like a house of cards: one additional, unelected and unbalanced power – big business – was now able to keep in check the entire system painstakingly designed by the Founding Fathers.
The United Nations collapsed as well, becoming not much more than another humiliated and powerless museum piece of some of the greatest aspirations of humanity. Its attempted rebuffs of neo-colonial states were met by financial blackmail and threats to make it irrelevant – something that had already happened many years earlier. Considering that the United Nations is nothing other than an organization representing almost all nations of the world, what was actually made irrelevant was the will of the great majority of the countries on this planet.
I saw it all from both sides: from rich North America, Japan, Singapore and Europe – and also from desperate Honduras and Nicaragua, Swaziland and Bangladesh, Papua and East Timor.
I often fantasized about what would happen if our planet were visited by a spaceship from another galaxy inhabited by much more developed and intelligent creatures that are truly cherishing equality and compassion, dignity as well as justice for all. What if they would circle the earth and listen to the speeches of our politicians and corporate heads, while watching through giant telescopes real life on the surface of our planet? My conclusion was that they would puke.
I myself could not stomach it anymore. I left the mainstream, began writing books and articles for independent media, and launched my own web-based magazine WCN. I put together a good team of international journalists from every corner of the world, but soon realized that globalization served only those who were really big, not enthusiastic writers and reporters like us. While I was in some ways “globalized” as well (living all over the world, refusing to belong anywhere), I had been shown that I misunderstood the rules of the game: globalization was for the companies, it was for “goods and services,” for business – not for the members of the opposition. WCN – with no geographical base, with no permanent mailing address and no bank willing to allow it to process credit card subscriptions – eventually went into hibernation.
I became a senior fellow at the Oakland Institute, a progressive political think-tank. A few months later I received an email from two great writers, Tony Christini and Mike Palecek, inviting me to become a cofounder of the new publishing house which would promote political fiction and some nonfiction. A few months later, Mainstay Press was born.
I never believed that I was born to be a rebel, a dissident, although it became obvious that no matter where I lived I ended up in dissent. Then I felt that I had no choice but to become one, as I felt no desire to become just another helpless bystander. As a kid growing up in Central Europe I was taught that not helping a person who is bleeding or hurt in the middle of the road is a crime. Let’s now apply this very correct logic to the global arrangement.
Not only do most of us – fortunate ones – do nothing to help, we pretend that nothing monstrous is taking place. While hundreds of millions are dying from malnutrition and curable diseases, we go to sleep with clear a conscience, satisfied that our governments and corporate leaders have pledged a few million dollars to tackle the problem. While our missiles with depleted uranium are bashing some miserable towns thousands of miles away, we say to ourselves that our invasion will lessen suffering over the long term. When our companies exploit desperate people in developing countries, we reply that we are helping to create jobs. And when our establishment supports some bloody coup against some progressive and democratically elected government, we pretend that we don’t know; we forget how to read between the lines. Not all of us, but many; still the majority.
Our indifference is finishing Africa – a continent plundered by poverty and disease which the West divided and exploited for centuries; and Latin America – first robbed of its gods and languages, enslaved and now finally resisting our total political and economic domination; and the Middle East – our open playground where we overthrew progressive and secular governments, supported some of the most heinous dictators, gassed people and exploited natural resources, offering to help with the unyielding determination of the Israeli right-wing to continue the colonization of the West Bank and Gaza; and the Pacific island nations and Southeast Asia – our tremendous orgy of terror against civilian populations from Vietnam to Laos and Cambodia, to support of Suharto’s military coup in 1965 that destroyed the nation and killed millions of innocent people and later led to the invasion of East Timor and one of the worst genocides in the history of mankind.
A writer who refuses to tell the truth is a liar. A writer who refuses to lie in these dark days is an outcast. To my surprise, despite being labeled as “opposition” or “dissident,” I saw my articles being reprinted and translated into several languages world-wide, mainly thanks to the outlet for many of the following commentaries – “Z-Magazine/Z-Net.”
The articles and commentaries which form this volume appeared in different publications and sites and were written during the last 4 years, after September 11 and during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the reelection of Bush and Blair, the devastating tsunami in Aceh and a shameful response to hurricane Katrina.
I see this book as my private tribute to those men and women worldwide who refused to accept indoctrination and who continue to search for the truth. I see this book also a tribute to those brave human beings who suffered but resisted our political terror in jails and torture chambers in Chile and Argentina, in Salvador and Guatemala, in the Buru concentration camp in Indonesia, everywhere we have supported inhuman regimes in order to serve our business and geo-political interests.
Jakarta, January 2006
Andre Vltchek
